I Should Die

soothingly.
    We took our places around the table, and after Mamie wished us a bon appétit , everyone tucked into the delicious food.
    “I was actually wondering if you had come across the topic of re-embodiment,” I mentioned, hoping that Papy would latch on to the topic without much prompting. My bet paid off. I could see his thoughts racing.
    “Re-embodiment,” he said. “Infusing a spirit into an inanimate object. Now that’s an interesting idea.” He tapped his chin. “I mean, there is the symbolic re-embodiment in the Christian Eucharist—transforming the communion wafer and wine into the actual body and blood of Christ. Which was probably based on the Egyptian ‘divine bread’ ritual performed by the priests of Osiris. But I can’t think of an example where there was a re-invention of a body and then possession with a soul.”
    “How about Frankenstein?” suggested Georgia with a helpful expression.
    “Georgia. Shush,” urged Mamie, spearing a carrot and placing it delicately in her mouth as if demonstrating for Georgia what she should be doing instead of spouting out disturbing ideas.
    “No, I mean it. That’s an example of a body that was created pretty much from scratch, and then electrocuted to give it a spirit.”
    “I think that the electrocution part just animated the reassembled body parts,” debated Papy. “It didn’t give the monster a soul.”
    “I distinctly remember him playing by a river with a little girl and crying,” insisted Georgia. “You can’t cry if you don’t have a soul.”
    “Um, can we pull the conversation away from horror movies and back to real life?” I asked, posing my silverware on my plate as I watched Georgia pop more salmon in her mouth. The idea of sewn-together body parts apparently didn’t affect her appetite. “I doubt the revenants are going to reassemble a Vincent-shaped body and then wait for a lightning storm to shock him into existence,” I said.
    “Wouldn’t have to,” responded Georgia, holding her fork up to make her point. “Nowadays you could probably do it with defibrillators.”
    I squeezed my eyes shut in frustration.
    “Georgia?” Mamie asked.
    “Yes?”
    “Please shut up.”
    “Okay.” My sister shrugged as if to say we would regret not having listened to her.
    I turned to my grandfather. “Although Monsieur Tândorn remembers his family’s records mentioning something on the topic, I thought I’d ask you anyway, since you’re my resident expert on every strange bit of mythical lore under the sun.”
    Papy nodded at me, acknowledging my words, but still lost in his own thoughts. “There is the whole concept of the golem in Jewish folklore . . .” And he was off throwing out bizarre stories that he theorized might have fact buried within the fiction. The rest of us listened—me rapt, Mamie and Georgia trying to follow but losing interest before we finished dessert.
    After dinner, I followed Papy to his study, where he sat down behind his desk and began stuffing tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. He waved at me to close the door—ostensibly so that Mamie wouldn’t know that he was smoking, but we both knew she was fully aware. This charade was a symbol of his gratefulness that she allowed him to carry on with his not-so-secret vice.
    “So tell me more about what this guérisseur said about ‘re-embodiment,’” he requested.
    “Well, the way he mentioned it, it was as if he expected the revenants to know about it. He said it was used for revenants who had been destroyed against their will and who were trapped as wandering souls.”
    “It must be an extremely rare occurrence, since you would think that if numa attacked a bardia, they would burn them immediately in order to destroy both body and spirit.” He lit the pipe and puffed on it until the flame caught. “Unless they had some nefarious plot like Violette’s.”
    “That’s exactly what Gaspard said.”
    Papy thought for a moment. “How old is the oldest of the Paris revenants?”
    “Jean-Baptiste is Napoleonic. Jeanne said he was two hundred and thirty. But Arthur, the one who was Violette’s protector, is something like five hundred.”
    “And he wasn’t aware of this re-embodiment possibility?”
    “No,” I responded.
    “So, if none of the revenants are aware of it, that must mean that the story predates the year 1500. How long is Bran’s lineage?”
    “Well, the book that the numa stole from your gallery— Immortal Love